Kitchen Cabinets Before & After

We have finally put the very last door back on our cabinets, and seeing the actual, completed finished product in its entirety was pretty amazing. Josh and I still laugh about how we thought this project would be done in five days, and how it's now been almost three months since we started. But, it kind of made the end result even sweeter. While I don't have the best "before" photos because we took all the doors down before I was able to snap a picture, I still think the difference is pretty dramatic. Goodbye dark maple wood and brass hardware! Take a looksie:

And now, just after photos, because they're prettier to look at:

I can't even verbalize how happy I am with the results. I'm so glad we saved the money and just painted our cabinets versus having brand new ones installed. They're not perfect: some of them need a better patching job where old knob holes used to be, and some need some paint drips sanded down and touched-up. But, we did it ourselves. And I kind of what to kiss every little flaw that's visible because I know that they're all representations of the love that went into this project. 

With all that said, our kitchen is not quite done. In the near future, we plan to stain wood planks to put up as doorway trim, do something with the bathroom and pantry doors (which you conveniently can't see in these photos) and also paint the ceiling. With the doorway trim, I'm hoping to distress the wood to make it look reclaimed, and stain it in a slightly warm walnut-ish hue to tie in with the dining room, which opens directly to the kitchen and has a lot of warm pine in it. We also plan to paint the ceiling the same colors as the cabinets/walls, but I'm undecided on how I want to do the panel pieces on the ceiling that are currently oak. Do I stain them the same color as the door trim to mimic the look of wood beams? Do I just paint the squares grey and the trim panels white? I really don't know - which is kind of why this project hasn't gotten done yet. But now that the rest of the kitchen is a crisp white and calming grey, having the oak panels on the ceiling really stands out, and I'm itching to do something with those suckers. Same goes for the doors - I'm still trying to decide what I want to do with them, but I'm leaning towards staining them the same color as the trim as a "for now" solution until I get a better idea.

In the far off future (3 years or so I'm guessing) we plan to replace the countertops and change them out to a white-ish quartz with gray marbling to mimic Carrara marble, put in a white subway tile backsplash and a new porcelain farmhouse sink/faucet. I was hoping to, at the very least, put in the new backsplash within the year, but the countertops we currently have would make that difficult, so it would just makes more sense to wait until we put in the countertops and the sink since all three of them go hand in hand anyway.

And then ... THEN ... the kitchen will probably be done.

I say that now. I'm sure I think of 10 more projects I'll want to do after all that's done.

Next, I plan to share with you some open shelving we installed, and the huge difference it made in opening up our kitchen. Yay!